The Kindle Edition of "The Lisbon Portfolio" by Kirk Tuck.
I know that thousands of my loyal VSL readers rushed out and bought my action/adventure novel the week it came out last June. One launch day alone some 750 were snapped right up, and over 5,000 people took advantage of the limited time, free book offer that happened in the Fall. But that still leaves thousands of you without the unique experience of "The Lisbon Portfolio" ownership. Sure, some of you are waiting for a copy with zero defects (sorry, artists will never achieve Six Sigma) so you can read in intellectual comfort. Others protest that this "is not the sort of stuff I read!" And others just don't read fiction at all (fiction??). But all of you who have not bought the book are misguided in thinking of this as just a more permanent and expensive alternative to the library for your casual entertainment. NO! This is a souvenir of our time together at the VSL blog site. It is the contemporaneous companion to the first 2300 delicious (and free) blog posts. It commemorates your pleasure in reading my posts and my pleasure in writing them.
Many sites have a "tip jar" which allows you to leave a contribution to the sites that you value. Other writers endless flog workshops and DVDs that are priced many dozens of times higher than our Kindle edition book. But instead of thinking of the book as just reading material think of purchasing the book as a positive vote for the pleasure or knowledge you've gotten over the years reading right here on the Visual Science Lab blog.
If you buy the book you'll be helping to support me ( financially and emotionally) as I write the next novel. The St. Petersburg Portfolio is already being written. Word by word, in dark coffee houses and during the downtime at shoots. Seeing people embrace or support the first book gives me the impetus and courage to go on and finish the second one. It also helps me rationalize the time and energy I spend researching and writing for VSL. If you have some spare net worth rattling around please consider dropping a smaller percentage on the Kindle version of the book. If you have an enormous fortune in liquid assets then by all means, step up and buy the paper back version. Either way you'll have my appreciation! That's the end of the only novel commercial so far this Summer. Now, back to our original programming....
thinking about St. Petersburg....
2 comments:
Kirk, I've been meaning to leave you a comment since I finished reading The Lisbon Portfolio (paperback edition) a few months ago (sorry, I didn't exactly rush out last summer, but better late than never! :) )
I really enjoyed the story. I've seen from the blog over the years that you are an artist with the written word as well as the visual image, and this shines through when your prose is given more space.
The mixture of humour with action adventure and a dash of suspense works great, and the touches of photo geekery add a little extra something. Henry's character is great, especially the unconventional twists, like throwing the pistol instead of shooting at the bad guy! I nearly cried about what happened to the M4 though.
So I'm really looking forward to The St. Petersburg Portfolio, though I guess I'll have to contain my impatience for a few more months.
By the way, if you would like a list of errors & corrections for the edition I actually got, I could send them (I used to occasionally freelance as a technical reader for a major UK publisher), but you probably know about and have fixed most of them by now.
Cheers,
Alex
I bought a Kindle copy for myself and a paper copy for my dad for his birthday. We both enjoyed it and look forward to the next one. Neither one of us would've understood as much of the book as we did if we hadn't been readers of your blog.
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